


One Life

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-15
Updated: 2008-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Life, like death, is just what you make of it, Laura.</i> [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Life

**Author's Note:**

> Five AU scenarios, and one post-Hub scene Sci-Fi would probably never show. Spoilers for that episode, obviously. Many thanks to ever awesome lyricalviolet for beta.

One Life  
(or Five Visions of Death Laura Didn't Have, and One Life She Just Had)  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

(Sorry for fic!spamming you all this weekend. Er, oops?)

II

 _"Richard!"_

 _"Hello, Laura."_

 _"You died, then. You died. I knew you had to, but... You died."_

 _"We all did. Not all at once. But those who didn't wished they had. Can you imagine it? To be alive amongst all that death?"_

 _"Of course I can. I live it."_

 _"Do you? I don't know that you do, Laura. Do you ever wonder how you might have died if you had stayed?"_

 _"I do."_

 _"I know. That's why I'm here."_

II

"Commander Adama."

He doesn't recognise her right away, she sees, but then, it's been a while since they met and then only briefly. She remembers being angry at him, but that was another job and a genocide ago. Now, she finds herself almost giddily happy to see him again, a familiar face that isn't dead.

"Roslin," he says after a moment, and she can see the memory come to him. She hasn't looked in a mirror for a long time, but she can imagine she doesn't look much as she did then.

"Galen Tyrol told me how to find you," she goes on. She can see him consider the words, weigh them for possible lies. Can see him consider if she's a Cylon, if she's come to take this refuge out, if he should trust her.

"Come in."

He doesn't, she realises the moment she steps inside and feels cold metal against her neck. In the half-light of the building, she can make out several armed men and women.

"Check her," Commander Adama says roughly, never taking his eyes off her face. She meets the challenge by looking straight at him even as hands roughly frisk her. It seems to please him slightly, because he makes something that might pass for a smile.

"She's clean," a voice says behind her, "but sir, she could still..."

"I know," Adama says, still looking at her. "Follow me."

She does, almost tripping over boxes as he leads her deeper into the compound, finally opening a door to what seems temporary sleeping quarters.

"How is the Chief?" he asks, and she sits down on a bunk almost gratefully.

"Dead."

For a long, slow moment he just breathes, then he sits down next to her and lowers his head. This close, she can see the lines on his face, each seeming a burrow of sorrow.

"I'm sorry," she says, remembering she used to know how to grieve. Before Richard, before Gina, before everyone. "He gave me his last anti-radiation medication and told me where he stored a cache. For your resistance. Caprica's last hope."

"There is no hope," Adama says harshly. "There's just dying like soldiers."

"Or like humans," she suggests angrily, and wonders just when she put her hand on his, and if it's a caress or a sign of war.

When he kisses her, it's nothing gentle, and she responds in kind, biting down on his lower lip. The sound at the back of his throat as he pushes his hand between her thighs is almost predatory, and it's almost as if they're still fighting. Against each other, or just against death, she doesn't know.

She tears at his shirt, and with that off, she tears at his skin, as if even naked he isn't bared for her. He digs his fingers into her hair and lifts her head almost painfully as he lowers her body and kiss, kiss, kiss, desperation by lips and flesh.

There are many ways to die, she thinks, remembering blood and fire and the stench both make. But there are many ways to live too.

He fraks her a little savagely, but she matches it, arching into his thrusts and even flipping over to be on top. Fighting domination so long, she thinks she's forgotten how to yield. Perhaps, so has he, at least until she tastes something that might be tears on his cheeks and his face goes very still as his body doesn't.

She doesn't climb off him after, doesn't even reach for the clothes he bothered removing. Just rests against him, feeling her heartbeats like thunder in her head.

"I'm sorry," she whispers against his chest, "but I don't remember your first name."

"William," he says softly, and for a moment, she sees a glimpse of the man he probably was. "Bill."

"Laura," she says, and she leans into his touch as he cups her cheek.

"You can stay as long as you want," he says, an offering that feels strangely intimate.

"Thank you, Bill."

Maybe, she thinks. Maybe tomorrow, maybe life, maybe hope, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe not.

They'll never hear the last nuke, the destruction of it traveling faster than the sound of it, the death of it traveling faster than the realisation. They're already dead. They don't know it, but they're already dead.

It'll just take three weeks to get there.

II

 _"I shouldn't have died."_

 _"No, Billy. You shouldn't."_

 _"You don't think I died for a purpose. Just another senseless death. But not you. You want to die for a purpose. Be a symbol. Do you think it's easier to mourn a symbol? Die a symbol? Easier to die the Dying Leader and not Laura Roslin?"_

 _"I don't know."_

 _"Yes, you do."_

II

It's a well-attended ceremony. The President, the Quorum, the Admiral, the New Earth Marines, they are all there, dressed sharply and with serene faces. Speeches are held.

Laura Roslin, they all say. She gave us Earth. President Laura Roslin, she gave us Earth and we give her tribute.

Most agree President Lee Adama's speech is the most touching, evoking the image of Roslin as the angel of Aphrodite, but some prefer Admiral Agathon's simple description of her as the star they all steered by.

Laura Roslin, people say. If you pray to her, she might give you a vision.

In the back, Bill Adama sits. Every year, every ceremony of her. He never nods, and never applauds the speeches. He just remembers.

"Uncle Bill," Hera asks one year, because she's the only one who dares. "Nick says Laura protected me because the Gods told her too. Because we're special, me and him."

"Laura Roslin wasn't an angel sent by the Gods," Bill says tiredly. "She wasn't divine."

"But everyone..."

"They needed a symbol. She died. That makes it a lot easier. They've forgotten."

"Forgotten what?"

"That she was Laura," Bill Adama says, and bends his head.

Hera never asks again.

II

 _"I'm beginning to feel like I'm hosting a party of you."_

 _"Madam President."_

 _"Admiral Cain."_

 _"You wanted to have me killed. And yet here you are, making the hard choices. You think someone won't come after you? You think you'll be different from me? You think you're better?"_

 _"I think I'm not you."_

 _"That doesn't mean you'll have a different end."_

II

It's a strange thing to see, she thinks, her blood on Bill's hands. It clings to his skin, the skin she kissed yesterday and woke up next to this morning, and even now, a part of her stays on him.

Strangely how intimate it is to die in someone's arms, she thinks.

"Laura," Bill says, and she tries to listen to his voice and not the howls of her body, screaming against the pain. "You're going to be all right. You're going to…"

"No," she says, because she won't be. Her body is already so, so tired from fighting the cancer and it can't take bullets too. No. End of the line, Laura Roslin. End of the line.

In the background, she can still see Tory's frozen face, and the strong arms restraining her. Tory, oh Tory, trying to be Cylon and ending up so human for it. Bill is going to kill Tory, and it may fracture the fragile peace, but Laura knows anything she says won't change that. Bill never took her orders. He's made decisions with her, against her, compromised between them, but he never took orders. Not really.

It's another reason she loves him.

"Bill," she says urgently anyway, fighting for breath. "The peace. Keep the peace."

In the distance, she can hear Cottle and probably several with him, but it's far too late. It was too late from the moment Tory decided the President had to die faster than cancer could kill.

The President, not Laura Roslin. It's the President who got assassinated.

It's Laura Bill will grieve.

"You're my peace," he whispers, his hands still feverishly pressing against her wounds. "You stay with me. You stay with me, Laura."

I don't have to be alive to do that, she thinks. Bill can claim even the dead. She'll stay with him. It's just her body that is letting go.

"Yes," she says, a lie that isn't. "I love you. I'll stay with you."

II

 _"I liked your funeral."_

 _"Thank you, but I had nothing to do with it but die. Why did you come? To envision your own? We were never friends."_

 _"We weren't strangers either, Cally."_

 _"No. You think of us all as your family, don't you? Your people?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"And if you get us all to Earth, will you die happily then?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"I wanted to die. I was going to kill myself. But life is treacherous. I fought at the end. Why do you think you can stop fighting?"_

 _"Because sooner or later, life counts you out."_

II

Hera likes it at the cabin.

There's the stream and the lake, and the green fields and endless space to run. Hera likes to run. When she was little, she knows she dreamt of it. Now she just does it.

Sometimes, when she goes to the cabin, people ask her to take messages to uncle Bill and aunt Laura, but they never have any messages to take back. Hera wonders about that. It's almost as if they want nothing to do with life outside their own.

They're very tired people, aunt Six once told her. Like Hera's mum were. Sometimes, people who are very tired need to rest. Bill and Laura in their cabin, Sharon in her grave.

Hera still doesn't understand why her mother picked a grave over a cabin. Cabins are great, and she can dance under the sun while Bill and Laura watch, hands linked.

Sometimes, they tell her about her father, and Hera knows it's his death that made her mum so tired. She remembers. One day you'll understand, she remembers. That's what they all said. One day.

One day, Laura sits down in the grass , Hera leaning against her shoulder and they watch the sky in all its variations of blue.

"This is the last time you can come here," Laura tells her.

"Don't you want me to come?"

"I've always tried to look after you, Hera. You know you you're always welcome. We just won't be here."

"Where are you going?"

"We won't know until we get there."

"Is it a trip?"

"You could call it that."

"But can't you come back?"

"Not everything has a return."

Hera thinks about that, watching the sun in Laura's greying hair. Age, she knows. Age she knows, but doesn't understand, because a life still feels like a lifetime.

"Both of you leaving?"

"Yes," Bill says, sitting down next to Laura and looking at her like a sun. "Both of us."

One day, Hera will understand death can hold no fear when life has been lived enough, but it is not the day she learns Bill and Laura have passed away.

II

 _"Mom."_

 _"Laura."_

 _"I still miss you."_

 _"I know you do, sweetie. But you're not me. You don't have to die like me."_

 _"I do."_

 _"For prophecy? For some old text you don't even fully understand? For fate? Or for your own heart? Easier to die than to grieve again?"_

 _"I grieved them all."_

 _"Yes. But as numbers, names, funerals to attend. You die, you won't have to grieve your heart if he dies."_

 _"He won't die."_

 _"He could just as well as you."_

II

"Madam President," Kara says, but Laura doesn't really listen. She can hear everything – the voice of Lee, shouting angrily, the whir of machines that failed at their job, the groan of Galactica itself and the hushed whispers of soldiers all around. She can hear it, but all she can listen to is the steady thump of her own heart, half wondering if she could stop it by will.

It was always meant to be her. It was never meant to be him.

Bill looks peaceful in death, almost smiling, and his hand that she clutches is still warm. He is dead, but the echo of life still resonates in him and she has no intention of letting go while she can still feel that.

"Laura," Cottle says.

Laura. Yes. Bill called her that just this morning, whispering it against her ear, kissing her temple and leaving her to sleep a little longer while he went to be the Admiral. Be the Admiral and die.

It was never meant to be him.

"Roslin!" Lee says angrily, and his voice is so much like his father's for a moment that she has to look up. "Let him go."

"Not yet," she says, and doesn't look away from his gaze, not even when she can see his grief unmask for a moment and match her own. It's Lee who finally nods, understanding.

"Give her what time she needs," he tells Helo, who nods as well. She can hear them step away, and then there's just her and Bill's warmth, slowly fading.

She doesn't get up until there is nothing but cold, and only then does she cry.

II

 _"Now I know I'm full of myself. What are you, then? The part of me that is dead?"_

 _"Maybe. Maybe I'm just the part of you that won't live."_

 _"I want to live."_

 _"Do you?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"Then live. You can't claim a refund. You can't wait for a better deal. Live."_

 _"You make it sound so simple."_

 _"It is. It's what you make of it that's complicated. Life, like death, is just what you make of it, Laura."_

II

Bill doesn't want to live without her.

Oh, he hasn't said as much, not with words, but she can read actions, and she knows what waiting alone in a raptor, the Fleet gone on, means. She knows, and she knows she has to tell him off for it, because he is the Admiral and the Fleet will need him.

She will tell him off.

She's just going to frak him senseless first.

He's leaning his back against the raptor, and she's leaning into him, kissing the underside of his jaw and feeling the material of his flightsuit under her fingers. They still haven't said much, words suddenly seeming so inadequate to everything that needs to be said.

His face speaks a whole story, though. He looks so young, and the tenderness and emotion on his face when he looks at her almost kills her. She thinks she has known he probably felt that way, little signs of it having been left like breadcrumbs for her to follow. But one thing is to draw a conclusion from read passages, glances, carefully chosen words, smiles and offered spaces in his life. Another is to feel it all at once, and know, know that she loves him and he loves her and that everything is changing a little.

She exhales a little raggedly as he strokes her wrist, his thumb tracing the veins and lines and pulse of it. Her body feels heightened, as if awoken, and she knows at least part of that is the lack of diloxin. The other is just mind over matter, emotions over body.

She knows the pilots are waiting, and decisions are. They have so much to do still, but still she can't seem to step away from him. Just this once, responsibilities will wait.

He's not going to fight her on that, she thinks, and knows for sure when he lifts her up on the raptor wing, cupping her cheek and kissing her. Carefully at first, just as he hugged her, but more assuredly as she responds in kind.

She's pretty sure anyone who would be likely to see them would tell them to get a room. But since that is not an option…

"Raptor?" she asks a little breathlessly, feeling his bottom lip press against her upper.

"Raptor," he agrees, the husk in his voice reverberating against her skin.

They climb in as ungracefully as two people not wanting to stop invading each other's personal space would, but she doesn't care, and he doesn't seem to either. Not even when she trips and half-impales him on something that beeps alarmed.

She can't help but laugh, and his chuckle fills her until she feels so alive it almost hurts and she's tearing at zippers and cloth with no dignity at all, kissing him all the while.

He has a slight stubble, she feels, and likes it, tracing the evenness of his teeth with her tongue and liking that too. New sensations and it's been a long time, making each bodily response feel a little new.

The sensation of her nipples hardening against his palm, the slight sharpness of nails as he traces the underside of her breast, the warmth of his mouth against her flesh. Yes. New and not, like a new partner to a dance always changing the steps just slightly.

Bill likes to take his time, she learns. He isn't slow, he's deliberate and focused and savouring, and sometimes when he closes his eyes, the look on his face almost makes her look away. Just almost, because she knows she is mirroring it.

She loves this man. She loves. All this death and fight and end of the world, and she loves.

"I love you," he whispers fiercely as he leans over her, and his kiss is possessive and soft at the same time.

Laura for Bill and Bill for Laura, love for love, life for life, death for death. It doesn't have to be complicated, she knows.

It's just what you make of it.

FIN


End file.
